


Are You Watching Closely?

by iheardavoice



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Gen, John-centric, M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-22
Updated: 2012-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 19:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iheardavoice/pseuds/iheardavoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I can see my reflection in the headstone, your name shining through me, running through me. I left a part of me with you. But I take a part of you with me, too."</p><p>John remembers the month between Sherlock's fall and his therapy session with Ella.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are You Watching Closely?

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Reichenbach, so obvious spoilers.

“Jealous?”

“No,” I answer. Too quickly, even I know that. She smiles, her red lips a flash of colour. Suddenly she’s you, and her red lips are the blood on the pavement. Everything is in black and white, apart from the horrid technicolour shock of red that’s spreading across the pavement and on your face. I can see the colour leaving your body, like someone’s draining it from you with a syringe. Your skin is changing from pink to grey. Your eyes are still open, observing until the very end. Are you watching closely? Can you see me, pushing to get to you, trying to hold your wrist to feel the last futile pulses? Can you pinpoint the moment when my world shatters? Do I look as broken as I feel, as your body is?

“Does yours snore?” The lady who was next to me is now the man from the bed and breakfast on Dartmoor. He’s standing, watching the scene unfold in front of him. “Mine does, constantly. I’ll get you a double room.” I open my mouth to protest, no we don’t need a double room, can’t you see, there’s only one of us - but you’re standing by my side, no blood, no broken bones, you’re whole. This is normal here; I haven’t just seen your body broken on the pavement outside a hospital, too far away for me to help but close enough to watch you fall.

We follow the man to our room. I know where we are. This is the night after Baskerville, after the hound that wasn’t. I can tell because the room is full of sorrys that you’d never say to me – but here you are and you’re saying sorry as you collapse into bed, sprawling over your side of the bed and over towards mine. I climb into bed, holding myself rigid so I don’t roll over to you, but you throw an arm over me, possessive, a display of ownership. _Mine._

“Are we to expect a happy announcement by the end of the week?” Mycroft is standing over us, his voice is teasing but affectionate. I elbow you but you don’t reply. We roll off the bed and into thin air, your arm is still thrown over me.

We’re falling, faster and faster. _Falling feels like flying until you hit the ground._ The ground is coming up to greet us. You let go of me, I try to grab your coat but can’t get any purchase. I’m not flying anymore, I’m where I was, watching you fall. I try to run but it’s like running through water. I can’t get my legs to move fast enough to move anywhere. I can’t move; I have to watch you do this all over again.

“Keep your eyes fixed on me,” you say to me. You’re falling for an impossibly long time. “Are you watching closely?”

I can’t look away. I want to look away but I can’t. That’s not how it happened. I watched you fall, so I have to watch you fall again.

“Goodbye, John.”

I wake with a start. My heart is hammering against my chest. I sat up too quickly, I feel nauseous. I stumble to the bathroom and collapse in front of the toilet, retching. I’m so tired, this bathroom is so cold. I’m shaking. I fall into uneasy sleep again, my head resting on the porcelain seat of the toilet.

I almost preferred my dreams after Afghanistan.

**

Ella is going to want me to talk about him. I don’t know what I’m going to tell her. I don’t know what I can tell her.

“How’ve you been, John?”

At least she doesn’t do the sympathetic head-tilt that everyone else does. Poor John, it says. Poor stupid John who got so carried away with his flatmate’s made-up stories that he couldn’t see that he was a fraud, that he had faked everything just to seem clever; he didn’t realise that he’d been tricked and is still convinced that a madman was some kind of genius. Poor soul. Bless him. 

I’ve inadvertently made quite a name for myself, the lesser part of “Hat-man and Robin”. I thought I was just his sidekick to the newspapers, an accessory like the deerstalker. When they liked him, when he was the “Super Sleuth”, that’s all I was. Now that he’s a fraud, a fake, they’ve started to find his former flatmate a lot more interesting. The first time I tried to leave the house I was descended upon by reporters, a massive swarm of them outside Baker Street, all of them trying to get a photo of me to add to the sensationalist articles they were churning out about him. Some hack from one of the red tops wanted to know what relationship we had. I was confused for a second until I saw the smirk on his face. If I didn’t think that reaction would’ve fuelled further speculation, I would’ve punched him. I was bringing my arm back, clenching my fist, taking a deep breath, before I stopped myself. After that, I mostly stayed inside until the interest in him died down and I could leave without being assaulted. I left for his memorial service, but that was only because I was given a police escort. He was buried privately, Mycroft had insisted. Family only. I wasn’t offended that I hadn’t been included.

I sat between Mike and Lestrade in the church. Mycroft was at the front, his jaw set. Absolutely no display of emotion. I suppose they drill that sort of thing out of kids in public school, don’t they? Suddenly there were hundreds of questions about him I wanted Mycroft to answer, questions I’d never thought of when I thought I’d have all the time in the world to ask him later. What was he like when he was five, ten? Were you the distant, haughty elder brother at twelve that you are now? What was his favourite story? Did he have many friends or was he lonely? Did you even know anything about him? 

Mycroft didn’t share many personal details about him in his eulogy; I suppose that’s part of the stiff upper lip, keep private matters private attitude of families like the Holmes’s. He made a few comments about how he was a much-loved brother despite his - he coughed and allowed a little smile to cross his lips - “eccentricities”. A small laugh bubbled up through the church then, each attendant thinking of their own experience with these “eccentricities”. I didn’t laugh. Thumbs in the vegetable drawer, feet next to my cans of Becks, eyes in the microwave – I suppose you could call these eccentricities. They never felt that way to me. I thought of his apparent inability to remember to buy milk; the way he played the violin with his eyes closed, oblivious to place or time; three-patch problems; mind palaces; his affection for Mrs Hudson; “four suicides and now a note, it’s Christmas”. I didn’t love him despite these habits, these peculiarities of his; I loved him because of them. 

Then it was my turn. I hadn’t written anything, I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea where to start. But that was okay, Mycroft had provided me with a poem to read, apparently it was one of his favourites. It was a morbid poem but it seemed fitting somehow that he should’ve liked a poem like that. At least I wasn’t being made to read Auden. A brief introduction for me, then Mycroft took his seat again and stared at me throughout the entire reading. “Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep.” My voice didn’t shake. Mrs Hudson dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, Mike looked down at the order of service. Lestrade’s gaze was fixed on a point somewhere to the left of me, between the pulpit and myself. Sally and Anderson – I never learned his first name, never needed to – were sat together towards the back. Neither of them would look at me. 

“Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die.” But you did, didn’t you? I struggled with that line but my voice didn’t waver. Molly looked at the floor, her hands clasped in front of her, resting on the order of service on her lap, your name swallowed up by her delicate, pale hands. Mycroft’s eyes were boring into mine, as if there was some hidden meaning to the poem I was supposed to get. His inscrutable expression assessing mine, waiting to see the moment where my expression changed, when I finally understood, when I got it. _Are you watching closely?_ But I didn’t get it though, did I? I never would. I’m a Watson, not a Holmes. I see, I do not observe; my mind doesn’t work in codes and cyphers. That was his job, not mine. The only consulting detective. I was just his sidekick, his blogger. The one to give him his social cues, to tell him when something he’d said was a bit not good. The one to stand there amazed and to lavish praise on him. The one to write up the cases, always using hyperbole and forgetting the most salient details. The soldier, not the detective.

I left Baker Street after one morning without him, sat at the breakfast table eating toast and jam with a strong cup of tea, looking over the papers. I got halfway through The Guardian and realised I was expecting to hear his constant commentary, was surprised that it wasn’t there. “Amazed it took them that long,” or “wrong”, or “I could’ve told them that, it’s obvious from the cuffs of his jumper.” I don’t think he even realised he did it, it was like vocalising his thought process during a case – he never expected a response, he wouldn’t have known if he was speaking to an empty room or if I was sat there, hanging onto his every word. As soon as I’d finished my cup of tea, I told Mrs Hudson I was leaving. She’d nodded, she understood. Did I have somewhere to stay? Did she want me to get in contact with Mrs Turner, she knew someone who had a place somewhere around Pimlico, a little one-bedroom flat. No thanks, Mrs Hudson. I’ll stay with Harry for a bit while I look for somewhere else. Her face uncertain. If you’re sure, dear. If you change your mind… I nodded and thanked her, said that maybe someday I would. We both know I won’t be back. I rang Harry, she told me to come over straight away. She’d got a flat somewhere in North London, it wasn’t very big but it’d do for the two of us in the interim. I hope you’re okay, John. I know we haven’t got on but, you know. Yeah, I know, Harry. 

We’d never been close as children but we’ve both suffered the loss of a loved one, in one way or another. These things bring people together, these shared experiences. How hollow you feel when you wake up and remember they’re still  
not there. I pretended I couldn’t hear her when she called Clara begging her to come back, come home; she pretended she didn’t hear me when I woke in the early hours of the morning from another nightmare, stumbling to the bathroom and throwing up.

The mornings with her weren’t dissimilar. We’d have breakfast together; toast, jam, tea, papers. But it wasn’t the same. It took almost a month not to jump out of my seat and grab a jacket whenever I heard a siren come past Harry’s flat and slow down. That was before. That was an entire lifetime ago. Can it really have only been a month?

I started looking for flats, co-habitation wasn’t ever really an option, it was a last resort with him, a way to save money because of my pitiful Army pension - but the idea was unthinkable in the long term now. Nobody could compare. I was lucky: Mrs Hudson gave me both deposits back; the cheques from clients had always been made out to me; and I’d discovered a frightening amount of money had been put into my account by someone unknown – Mycroft making sure I could afford two people’s rent in 221B, find a new place, move to a different country, all three ten times over. I moved out of Harry’s and into my new place. It was fairly small, modern fittings in an old building, an entirely different area. Thousands of other people in the building, I didn’t have to be known to anyone. I was a faceless tenant to a nameless landlord. I existed, I managed, I coped. 

I’m jolted back to the present. Eighteen months after the last session with Ella, and I’m back where I started, sat in this chair. But now I know what life can be like, what living feels like; and it’s been taken away from me, just when I was really starting to enjoy it.

It’s raining outside. It has been all day, probably all week, possibly all month. The days run into each other after a while.

Ella leans forward in her chair. “Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

“I found some work at a surgery.” She nods. Approval. “And I see Mike on Thursdays. The occasional date. Normal kind of thing, you know.” She frowns slightly, thinks I don’t notice. She doesn’t believe me. I don’t either. I exist, I’m not living. It’s like eating a meal that hasn’t been seasoned – it does its job but it’s bland, boring. Tasteless.

“Are you sleeping?”

It’s easier to not sleep sometimes. I don’t see his face, I don’t see him falling towards the pavement. I don’t have to relive our time together and see how they all slotted together to end how they did, like some clip show on the telly that I can’t turn off. “The Best Fifty Moments of 221B”. 

Ella correctly interprets my silence as a no. “What do you do instead of sleeping?”

I search for who Moriarty is, or was, or used to be. I sit and try to pick holes in the alibi he created as Richard Brook. I stay up all night trying to cobble together the network Moriarty had, because torturing myself over this is better than the nightmares. But I don’t tell Ella this. Everyone knows Moriarty was a lie; Richard Brook was an actor, hired to play a part. I’d get sectioned.

“I just watch telly. Sometimes read, attempt the Times crossword,” I say. She can tell I’m lying. She’s no consulting detective but honestly I think anybody would be able to see through this.

She sits back and adjusts her notepad. Hiding it from me. She remembers that I’d read her notes upside down last time. I think this is the point where I’m supposed to say something more, to elaborate. I don’t want to say anything. The silence stretches out longer and longer. It’s an elastic band at its thinnest point. It’ll snap in a moment. But it won’t be me who breaks the silence. 

“Eighteen months since our last session. Why today?”

The rain is really coming down now. I can barely see anything beyond the patio doors; the grey paving stones are just blending in with the colour of the sky. It’s coming down in sheets, like someone’s emptied a bucket against the patio doors. I can only just make out the outline of the hedge at the bottom of the garden. She’s going to make me say why. Even if it takes the entire hour, she’s going to make me explain. I’m sure it’s in my best interest, but I’m not ready yet. 

“You read the papers?” I ask her. Yes she does, sometimes. “And you watch telly. You know why I’m here.”

Here’s your chance, Ella. This is where you can cut in, save me from having to answer this. She doesn’t reply.

“I’m here because –“ my voice breaks and I look away so I can’t see the pity in her eyes. Poor John, poor silly man who got swept away by a lunatic in a long coat who gave him a bit of excitement after he came back from war. She leans forward. She thinks we’re about to start making progress. We’re not.

“What happened, John?”

“Sherlock –“ I can’t do this. I can’t. 

“You need to get it out.” No I don’t. I can keep it in. I don’t want to talk about this, I’ve changed my mind. Stop it. Don’t make me do this, I’m not ready. 

“My best friend, Sherlock Holmes, is dead.” 

I want to howl, I want to wail like a child. I want to scream until my lungs burst. I want to do something so that the constant pain I feel is a real, tangible thing, something that I can heal, can fix. If I’m crying, I don’t care.

No histrionics, although that’s what I want to do. Always the soldier. Stoic. Strong. I swallow past the lump in my throat and take deep breaths until the wild panic in my heart eases. Easy, easy. Calm. Take a deep breath, then another. Ella is watching me, watching the war between my heart and my head. She’s asking me something but all I can hear is a crashing in my ears. “John?” It sounds distorted. I force myself to focus on her and not blood on the pavement, the last flickers of life under my fingertips, his eyes open and so unnaturally blue. Her voice comes swimming up to me. “John, I know this is going to be very difficult, but I want you to tell me what you saw. What you felt.”

And so I do. I tell her about how the last words I said to him face-to-face were so angry, so disappointed, how I called him a machine. How I suddenly realised something was wrong and I came back to find him, how I saw him on the roof. How he told me he was a fake, he’d lied, he’d looked me up so he could impress me. How he made me stand and watch, god, why did he make me watch? His last words, “goodbye, John”, and then how he threw himself off the building, arms outstretched, like he was flying. One final experiment with gravity. I tell her about the impact of his body hitting the pavement, the blood everywhere. How everyone around him stopped me from getting to him, how thin and pale and cold his arm was when I finally took it, his eyes still open, still watching. Are you watching closely? 

She offers me a tissue. I didn’t even realise I’d cried. We sit in silence, the only sound the rain hitting the windows and the quiet, comforting tick of the clock on the side table. 

“John, I don’t think I need to tell you that you’re going through post-traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD you suffered as part of your time out in Afghanistan coupled with having to watch someone very dear to you commit suicide – it’s a perfectly logical reaction to an incredibly traumatic experience. Your insomnia is because of the flashbacks you experience when you’re asleep. You choose not to sleep, and distract yourself during the day with your work, and then at night by watching television or reading. But by not talking about it, when they do come, the flashbacks are only going to be more frequent, more severe and more distressing.”

She’s suggesting we make our sessions regular. She advises that I block access to the blog so that I can’t read it. Make sure I try to make new friends who haven’t met me in the context of him. Slowly start to talk about him with those who did know him. Somewhere, a quiet bell rings. I look at my watch. Our five-minute warning. The session is nearly over. I haven’t spoken for a good twenty minutes, and she’s leaning forwards. Spotlight is on me. She’s taken a breath but hasn’t spoken yet, like she’s weighing her words. Working out the best way to broach the topic. I know what she’s going to ask me to do. I won’t do it, I can’t.

“The stuff that you wanted to say, but didn’t say it. Say it now.”

If I thought I knew what it was, I’d tell her. But I don’t know what it is I’m allegedly hiding from her. No, that’s a lie.

“I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t.”

I know what it is. I just can’t tell her. There was one person I could tell and he’s not here. She knows this, too. But she can’t force me. She declares the session over; we make a date for the next one. Two weeks’ time. She wishes me well as I leave, and I am painfully aware that I’m limping again as I walk away from the building and towards a taxi.

**

I never said goodbye to him at the memorial service. I stayed as officers from the Met shook my hand and offered condolences, I shook the hand of person after person, accepted their hushed tones and offers of support. I could feel panic weighing down on me and I needed to leave. The cars went on to the cemetery but I didn’t join them. If I’d said goodbye it would’ve been real, so I left without a goodbye, so that I could pretend it hadn’t happened. But it’s been a month. It’s time to say goodbye. I have to do this. Ella will be proud.

I ring Mrs Hudson, ask if she wants to come to the cemetery with me to leave some flowers, to say goodbye. She agrees and we meet somewhere in town, away from Baker Street. The taxi journey there is conducted in silence. The lilies in the bouquet are making my eyes water and some of the pollen has dropped onto my jacket. Never mind. It’ll come out in the wash. Mrs Hudson looks much frailer than I remembered.

It’s a plain headstone. No date of birth or death, no saccharine inscription. Just your name. Maybe one day, years from now, it really will be just a name. Someone will be wandering through the graveyard and will stumble upon your headstone and will wonder who you were that all you got was a name, written on a black granite headstone. “Sherlock Holmes,” they’ll say. “That’s an odd name. I bet he was one of those proper stereotypical English country gent-types. Massive country pile, posh place in London, mad family. Strange that he’s buried here, then, rather than in some mausoleum or something.” They’ll walk away, with a pensive “hmm” and carry on, in the search for the name they’re looking for.

“I was so alone, and I owe you so much.”

Funny, how it’s easy to substitute one word for another. If you were here with me, you’d know that wasn’t the word I was thinking. You would read it in my eyes, in the way I hold myself, the way my mouth tightens. You’d know what I meant to say, you’d know what I mean. I think you probably always knew. Too tactful to say, who would’ve guessed that from you? But here I am, and here you aren’t and I still can’t say the only thing I wish I could’ve told you.

I’m leaving now. That’s enough. I’ve said it all, I’ve said what I can. But my feet are carrying me back and I’m still talking, I’m a madman talking to a slab of granite, a bouquet of flowers and your body, six feet under.

“There’s just one more thing. One more thing, one more miracle for me, Sherlock. Don’t be dead. Would you, just for me, just stop it. Stop this.”

I feel like a child writing a letter to Father Christmas, the non-believer trying their hand at prayer. It won’t achieve anything, but I still wait just a second for you to appear, drop down from a tree, _Come on John, what are you doing, there’s a case! We need to be looking at the flowers in that man’s grave, they’re going to keep someone out of prison._

I know I’ll be disappointed but it still hurts knowing you’re not going to.

I let myself cry this time. It’s not the heart-wrenching wail I feared and expected would come out of my mouth; it’s a panicked sob, like I’m afraid you might walk around the corner and catch me crying. I can see my reflection in the headstone, your name shining through me, running through me. I left a part of me with you. But I take a part of you with me, too. 

No, enough now. Pull yourself together, soldier. Chin up. There’s work to be done. I gather myself, leave you like you’re my superior officer, which, I suppose, you were. I’m trying not to limp, but it’s difficult. It’s time to carry on. I’m leaving you behind, Sherlock. I have to let you go. Can you see me, moving on, trying to soldier on without you?

Are you watching closely?

**Author's Note:**

> The line "Falling feels like flying until you hit the ground" is from the song "Walking 2 Hawaii" by Tom McRae; the poem "Do not stand at my grave and weep" was written by Mary Elizabeth Frye. Some of the dialogue has been shamelessly pilfered from the TV show, specifically the first and last episodes ("A Study in Pink" and "The Reichenbach Fall"). I'm sorry this is so angsty - I had intended on giving it a happy ending, but the moment never really appeared and it worked so well as it is.


End file.
